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Quotes

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

—Tacitus, c. 117

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

—John Wilkes Booth, 1865

Politics is the art of the possible.

—Otto von Bismarck, 1867

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

—Che Guevara, 1968

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

—Magna Carta, 1215

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

—Shimon Peres, 1995

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

—Emperor Francis Joseph, c. 1850